The Umbral Intentions™ blog serves two purposes. The first is to tell stories. The second is to provide practical information for the This Mental Eventide™ role-playing game. This second purpose has been at the centre of what became an event of great note in the blog and a number of posts on my other blogs, including this one. Let me recap it quickly. In "Deadly Nightmare Toys" Josh meets a woman and her companion. The woman has a crude homemade toy that she pretends is real, except of course it does have a crude semi-life about it. In the follow up post "Mistrust and the Pre-Emptive Strike" Josh has to deal with the murderous toy again. Because of the nature of the game, even in its incomplete state, I was left with a conundrum. That issue was how would a physical psychic like Josh, and an empath like Sarah Jayne deal with a non-corporeal entity. On their own the likely result would be their death.
This more recent post from Josh is what I was talking about the previous Dark Corners, "You're Lucky it All Falls into Place, Josh". The Umbral Intentions™ blog is to be wholly indicative of the game setting. By serendipity I came upon an elegant solution. If you have an angry entity, you want the man who showed up suggesting that he could appease your haunting to help you. The only question was how does he do it, now that we know he is not bluffing or crazy, but does indeed successfully deal with these situations. It was a serious sticking point without the reappearance of Myron, as an existing character already positioned for the audience to understand as helpful, almost as if I had actually planned it. Until I came upon the Myron solution I didn't know how to be true to the game. Entities like this are extremely dangerous with a limited number of ways to be dealt with.
This whole scenario also brought to the fore a truth of the game that isn't readily apparent, and I don't know when or if it will come up within the narrative, but it is certainly an issue in both the mechanics and the flavour of the game. If you dig into it there is a discrepancy between the physics that should be involved in the function of psychic powers and the way that people describe them and think about them from a purely fictional or utilitarian perspective. That means the way powers like this would work if they were real and how a player wants to use the power or an author wants to describe a scene, are different. In contrast, in other situations the outcome is the same whether the reasoning behind it is correct or not. Certainly a character's knowledge of how their gift works may excuse some inaccuracies. I am fond of allowing characters to be wrong, and even carry on uncorrected until it is useful to elaborate and re-adjust their thinking.
Music: Music: The Game Never Ends by Stratovarius and by Let Me Hear You Scream by Ozzy Osbourne.
I'm back from my hiatus. It has been a slow start elsewhere. There just never seems to be enough time to do what I think needs to be done. There is also maybe a bit too much of not doing anything. Pardon me if I ramble a bit.
Work continued on with Umbral Intentions™ as intended. It's somewhat imperative to keep things rolling there, plus it is meant to be the blog of the fictional Joshua Rhoads who does not have the luxury of taking a month or more off. There can be pauses, such as the break back in December where I covered the absence by timing it to coincide with Josh going on the run from the government agents. I also complete revamped the look of the blog and the name--something that was planned from before the first post even because I had no idea why he would use the Umbral name if I were starting the story before he should have even seen the words "umbral intentions".
I have a post for here about Umbral for next week, and I thought I had another post on the go about it, but I seem to have covered it at least a little in "Suspicious Enemies", though I may still call it out further here in early July.
Stay tuned to this space for these posts and many more!
Music: Music: Fortunes of War by Iron Maiden and Inconclusion by Dee Snider.
